Simultaneous estimation of relative phase and coherence in astronomical interferometry

Abstract:Astronomical interferometry is a cornerstone technique for high-resolution stellar imaging and observational astrophysics, extracting spatial information from the coherence of light collected by separated telescopes. Since the degree of coherence is complex, a genuine imaging task requires the joint recovery of the modulus and the relative phase, instead of independent singleparameter estimations. We investigate the simultaneous estimation of both parameters based on direct interferometry scheme and continuou-svariable quantum teleportation scheme. We find that in simultaneous estimation the direct interferometry scheme consistently yields a lower quantum Cramér-Rao bound, demonstrating its superiority over the continuous-variable quantum teleportation scheme. Furthermore, we establish the conditions under which the classical Cramér-Rao bound for Gaussian measurements saturates the quantum Cramér-Rao bound, identifying heterodyne detection as a near-optimal measurement scheme in the large mean photon number regime. An analysis of transmission loss reveals that the direct interferometry scheme yields superior precision in the short-baseline regime, whereas the continuous-variable quantum teleportation scheme outperforms it at longer baselines.

arXiv:2607.24105 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2607.24105v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.24105 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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